LAHORE: PML-N central leader Muhammad Mehdi has termed reception of former army ruler Pervez Musharraf disappointing.

Talking to a group of reporters here on Sunday, he said the ‘disappointing’ reception accorded to Gen (retired) Musharraf indicated that the masses were aware enough to differentiate between dictatorship and democracy.

He recalled that thousands of people had thronged the Islamabad airport to receive Nawaz Sharif and had endured baton charge and tear gas by the then Musharraf regime back on Sept 10, 2007.

Whereas the party of dictator Musharraf was given a free hand but it could not mange to assemble more than a few hundred people to receive its leader at the Karachi airport.

The PML-N leader also gave credit to his party for the outgoing parliament’s refusal to validate Musharraf’s Nov 3, 2007 ‘mini martial law’ and blocking the way of Kerry Lugar Bill as well as approval of a ‘flawed’ accountability law by the National Assembly.

Referring to the performance of Punjab government, he said it worked wonders in the fields of education, health and communications as it opened medical colleges in remote areas like Dera Ghazi Khan.

Replying to a question, he said the PTI failed to make even that big show it had managed on Oct 30, 2011. He termed Imran Khan’s supporters a fan club that could not form a political party and would disperse on the very first failure in the electoral contest.